She nodded frantically.

I pulled myself from bed and dug around the house until I found a handheld sonogram. I watched her quiet down and grow nervous as I pressed the wand to her stomach.

"It's just gonna show a picture and play sound," I assured.

She relaxed flat on the bed and I moved the wand around until I found horse hooves galloping. At least, that's what she told me it sounded it like.

"Andrew," she said.

"Oh no," I played, "Don't tell me I'm not the daddy, Peach."

She pushed my chin. "If it's a boy. We can call him Andy for short."

"And if it's a girl?" I asked.

"I think it's a boy." She turned shy. "I've had dreams about him for a long time, but I never knew that it was my baby. I thought it was you."

I brushed my lips against her bare side. "You dreamed about a little boy?"

"Ever since I was little. I used to tell your dad about the dreams, and he told me he had some, too."

I nodded. "I know, he's told me about them." And then I sighed, laughing slightly. "Nothing is by coincidence, right, Everly Anne?"

"Right, Callum Andrew."

So I reveled in the charm of heartbeats, and later in the selflessness of her love for our unborn child. The power that love could stir and the magnitude of walls it could crumble.

Charm tried to hide itself at 3:47 in the morning in front our fridge, once. It stirred me from a deep sleep and tattled on the vacant spot beside me. A container of honeydew cradled in the crisscross of her legs was where charm carried me. Secretly I spied from the doorway as she shoved bite after bite into her mouth, the juice running down the length of her arm and chin.

I sank to my feet and smiled at her.

"You know we have a very nice kitchen table."

"You're gonna need to stop at the grocery store in the morning," she said, finishing her last bite. "I'm gonna have blueberry pancakes for breakfast and we don't have a single drop of maple syrup in this house. How is that possible?"

My smile widened. "Well, we are living in sin, Everly Anne."

She started to laugh and then she fell into hysterics; I imagined jovial tears would have streamed down her face until they turned anguished, if it were possible. I moved to her side and held her, unafraid and completely amused by the power of pregnancy hormones.

But that fearlessness didn't last long.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

While a room full of mothers breathed out a chant of, "HEE-HEE-WHOOOOOO," Everly only sat quietly and observed. It was our first and only Lamaze class. I had assured her I was more than equipped to help her breathe through labor-mostly as a comforting notion since pain wasn't an issue-but of course oxygen wasn't the real issue either.

She stared out the window of the Chevy as we drove home through a thunderstorm, the rain beating on the windshield and hood like a million pennies falling from the sky. It was still too quiet. The rain couldn't fall hard enough to block out the shouting of her silence.

"Want to stop for ice cream, Topolina?"

"No."

"That's a first."

When we pulled into the driveway I cut the engine, but we sat trapped by two colliding storms. Everly finally turned to me and her eyes said it all-this was where fairytale thoughts about motherhood came to an end.

Her voice was never smaller. "I can't feel him."

"He's fine, Everly Anne."

She pitched an octave. "But I can't feel him."

I went to lean my hand on her stomach but she knocked it away. "I know YOU can feel him. I know all of those other moms can feel their babies. You're just watching words come out of my mouth, Callum Andrew, but you're not hearing me." And then she cried tearlessly, "I can't feel my own baby." And then that same fear that once lived inside of food and anxiety sprang back to life as she gasped for air, choked by the agony of what she felt repeated over and over that she could not feel our son.

"He's right there." I put our hands along the curve of her stomach, following a pattern I knew by heart. "Head. Back. Butt. Legs. Feet. All right there. He's perfectly fine. He's perfectly there."

It did very little to ease her torment. I was being technical and I knew it, but I couldn't formulate a magical way for her to feel him. It was out of my hands.